one of those fabled sheeted creatures that float about at night; I mean a phantom--a real phantom--in the sunlight--standing before my very eyes in broad day! . . . Now do you feel inclined to go on with my case, Mr. Keen?" 
"Certainly," replied the Tracer gravely. "Please continue, Captain Harren." 
"All right, then. Here's the beginning of it: Three years ago, here in New York, drifting along Fifth Avenue with the crowd, I looked up to encounter the most wonderful pair of eyes that I ever beheld--that any living man ever beheld! The most--wonderfully--beautiful--" 
He sat so long immersed in retrospection that the Tracer said: "I am listening, Captain," and the Captain woke up with a start. 
"What was I saying? How far had I proceeded?" 
"Only to the eyes." 
"Oh, I see! The eyes were dark, sir, dark and lovely beyond any power of description. The hair was also dark--very soft and thick and--er--wavy and dark. The face was extremely youthful, and ornamental to the uttermost verges of a beauty so exquisite that, were I to attempt to formulate for you its individual attractions, I should, I fear, transgress the strictly rigid bounds of that reticence which becomes a gentleman in complete possession of his senses." 
"_Ex_actly," mused the Tracer. 
"Also," continued Captain Harren, with growing animation, "to attempt to describe her figure would be utterly useless, because I am a practical man and not a poet, nor do I read poetry or indulge in futile novels or romances of any description. Therefore I can only add that it was a figure, a poise, absolutely faultless, youthful, beautiful, erect, wholesome, gracious, graceful, charmingly buoyant and--well, I cannot describe her figure, and I shall not try." 
"_Ex_actly; don't try." 
"No," said Harren mournfully, "it is useless"; and he relapsed into enchanted retrospection. 
"Who was she?" asked Mr. Keen softly. 
"I don't know." 
"You never again saw her?" 
"Mr. Keen, I--I am not ill-bred, but I simply could not help following her. She was so b-b-beautiful that it hurt; and I only wanted to look at her; I didn't mind being hurt. So I walked on and on, and sometimes I'd pass her and sometimes I'd let her pass me, and when she wasn't looking I'd look--not offensively, but just because I _couldn't_ help it. And all the time my senses were humming like a top and my heart kept jumping to get into my throat, and I hadn't a notion where I was going or what time it was or what day of the week. She didn't see me; she didn't dream that I was looking at her; she didn't know me from any of the thousand silk-hatted, frock-coated men who passed and repassed her on Fifth Avenue. And when she went into St. Berold's Church, I went, too, and I stood where I could see her and where she couldn't see me. It was like a touch 

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